loam

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. Soil composed of a mixture of sand, clay, silt, and organic matter.

n. A mixture of moist clay and sand, and often straw, used especially in making bricks and foundry molds.

transitive v. To fill, cover, or coat with loam.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. A kind of soil; an earthy mixture of clay and sand, with organic matter to which its fertility is chiefly due.

v. To cover, smear, or fill with loam.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. A kind of soil; an earthy mixture of clay and sand, with organic matter to which its fertility is chiefly due.

n. A mixture of sand, clay, and other materials, used in making molds for large castings, often without a pattern.

intransitive v. To cover, smear, or fill with loam.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

To cover or coat with loam; clay.

n. A soil consisting of a natural mixture of clay and sand, the latter being present in sufficient quantity to overcome the tendency of the clay to form a coherent mass.

n. In founding, a mixture of sand, clay, sawdust, straw, etc., used in making the molds for castings. The compound must be plastic when wet, and hard, air-tight, and able to resist high temperatures when dry. Specifically called casting-loam.

n. a rich soil consisting of a mixture of sand and clay and decaying organic materials

Etymologies

Middle English lam, lom, clay, from Old English lām; see lei- in Indo-European roots.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

From Old English lām. (Wiktionary)

Examples

The term loam is applied to a soil which, from its appearance in the field and the feeling when handled, appears to be about one-half sand and the other half silt and clay with more or less organic matter.

We can easily see that the melting away of the immense glaciers that we have been describing would produce vast floods in the rivers, and it is perhaps owing to the presence of such swollen rivers that are due the great beds of surface soil, called loam or loess, found in all the river valleys of France and Germany.

The clay wherewith our houses are impannelled is either white, red, or blue; and of these the first doth participate very much of the nature of our chalk; the second is called loam; but the third eftsoons changeth colour as soon as it is wrought, notwithstanding that it looks blue when it is thrown out of the pit.